The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-04-14


came widower, and his mind was set on
marrying again.
It may have been the example of mar
rying children under age, torn from their
parents by their own disobedient i'm
pulses or the powerful sinister influence
of man, or It may have been the childish
beauty of Eunice Howton, his distant
relative, which doomed her to become the
bishops wife when she should be old
enough to receive his orders and not bring
the laws of Pennsylvania down upon his
head. The bishop bided his time.
Eunice was hardly fifteen, slender,
gray-eyed blonde, whose feet, touch the
ground as they would, turned into lines
of grace, and music seemed to be playing
when she walked or moved, to such har-
monies did she bend; while in the action
of her head upon her delicate neck and
even in the motion of her lips there ap-
peared to be violin music whistled by her
spirit as the upland zephyrs played upon
it and her heart desired to dance
The country people said that this was
and dancer.
Somewhere back in the undiscerned
past and vagueness of larger world it
was said that Bishop Howton had been a
show manager, and that his orphan
cousin had married French dancer who
was in his strolling company.
This cousin had been left to Garrick,
who had kept him down and nearly
starved him, repressing his spirits by an
avarice and superstition which lay
across each other, and finally retired Gar
rick from the show business complete
failure, whilst his ward, set free by matri-
mony, made nice little fortune keeping
dancing academy with his wife.
When the parents died something of
the husbands inherited tenets caused him
to repent. though he had never done any
thing bad, and in the weakness of dying
he gave his child to his relative to be her
trustee and the trustee of respectable
little fortune.
The poor dancing teacher thought the
word "bishop" covered a regenerate heart.
The bishop was merely capitalist in
marriage fees.
Some of the schoolboys called him Old
Yokef-noki, because he yoked so many
conrIes.
What education he had picked up
q. aItce and illiterate associations had
chasel out of his head; like any old
country Dutchman, he could spell joists
for his barn joyce and talk about the
breechman on his horse when he meant
breeching.
This he considered reasonable hu-
mility.
As time advanced Garrick grew deeply
in love with Eunice, and forgot to give
spiritual restraint to his son. He had
appointed the time for his ward to be
sealed to himself and she made no oppo-
sition, because she knew nothing upon
the subject and was too merry to take
! trouble if she did.
"At seventeen sharp" old Garrick
Howton often repeated to himself, look
ing at Eunice with the threefold passions
/ of love, avariee and superstition.
Often when an old man falls in love, it
seems to him like holiness, when it is
only foolishness.
In that way Garrick threw himself
back into his natural state, before he be-
came. an avaricious scoundrel, of self
/ frightened hypocrite. He got to be-
| lieving in the religion he practiced upon.
He feared night solitude and ghosts. He
believed that his monstrous passion was
a sacrifice on his part for the sake of Sc
curing Eunice's soul
His fear of old age was modified by the
certainty of this bright celestial being,
who would so long outlive him, keep
ing the devil from his threshold and
chamber, and by her fortune making it
unnecessary for him to continue in his
predatory pastorship at the expense of
his remaining conscience, fear of the law,
and fear of private vengeance.
81 should be the devils prize without
her." mused Garrick Howton. 1.-THE
children have tied in wedlocks of de-
spair, the uniformed souls l have mana
cled to selfish fiends, the headstrong
schoolgirls have made the legal slaves
of hideous skinf1ints, and who have in
few months awakened to everlasting re-
pentance and horror, would troop into
my lonely home amongst these noun
tains and drive me crazy with their
curses. should go mad But Eunice,
Eunice, she will guard my door and
warm my heart, and bring other angels
like her from Heaven to my relief"
1t was plain that the bishop was be-
coming slightly hysterical.
Weasley Howton had been notified by
his father that he must go West and
establish his own congregation of the
Zionskites.
He was sent to the garret to study the
discipline and Scriptures.
He was shy, watchful fellow, who
sometimes looked as if he might be
thinking, and the bishop had no idea of
having him around at the period of his
second honeymoon.
One day Eunice stole up into the gar
ret, while the bishop was marrying
one-eyed man of sixty to mountain
maid of eighteen, and she met different
scene there from the penance and prayer
she had expected.
Weasley was rugged out in a suit of
theatrical clothes taken from Eunice's
parents trunks, and was executing jig.
The bishop had told Eunice that in
the said trunks was the devils wardrobe
The young people locked the door and
examined it.
What places are garrets for rain and
Lowell How it drops upon the roof! How
it goes pit-a-pat in the heart! How the
heart is raining suddenly through the
eyes and the roof is beating with the pal
pitations of the wind!
Old men seldom 60 to garrets. Bad old
men like Garrick Howton never do.
Next week Weasley Howton was to
start for Indiana, and be an apostle ON
the Wabash.